Suspend rights today, suffer tyranny tomorrow

This is a season Americans celebrate one of history's greatest teachers of love and forgiveness. The Connecticut families of the Newtown atrocity are suffering wounds that may never heal because their children and devoted teachers were massacred. The nation grieves as well. Even one of my favorite carols, "God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay," sounds hollow at a time like this.

This is a season Americans celebrate one of history's greatest teachers of love and forgiveness. The Connecticut families of the Newtown atrocity are suffering wounds that may never heal because their children and devoted teachers were massacred. The nation grieves as well. Even one of my favorite carols, "God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay," sounds hollow at a time like this.

Civilian massacres impel us to look into the dark hearts of humanity, for surely evil dwells among us. No matter how fervently we wish it were otherwise or how deep we dig for solutions, no explanation, course of action or inaction is satisfactory. Essential achievements of peace and freedom — like friendly towns where children attend school together — might turn innocent citizens into sitting ducks.

Lethal devices from firearms and Molotov cocktails to improvised explosives are apt to persist, despite uneven efforts to banish them. The world's largest, methodical civilian massacre of the last 20 years, Rwanda's 1994 tribal genocide, was performed mainly with cudgels and machetes. Progress in treating mental illness is unlikely to forestall every lost soul from going berserk. Where profound evil lurks in the human heart, monsters will find a way to destroy the lives of individuals and the peace of mind of peoples.

These are dilemmas. There are no easy answers. Thorough readings of history cannot reassure us that the murder of innocents will someday end. No matter how grisly the crime, it's essential not to yield to panic or despair. The clamor to "do something!" immediately might better seek short-term improvements not requiring federal action or rewriting the Constitution. Standard alarm systems detect forced entry and feature sensors for breaking glass. Schools might need armed campus cops. My collegiate years in late 1960s Berkeley were rife with disturbances, some of them violent. Several demonstrations were led by the founding Black Panthers, as typical a gun cult as you found in those days. There were police ready at the drop of a hat. No cops ran amok while I was there, yet demonstrators often did. We callow students griped about "the pigs," but few would have felt safer without them — surely a reason they were never disbanded.

Statistical analysis of frequency, relative risk and likeliness of recurrence won't console people close to a massacre, parents who worry about their children or anyone who seeks certainty in an uncertain world. Initial reactions to crimes of this size are emotional. The people who react quickest usually have a pre-set agenda: gun control, say, or tighter surveillance of mental illness. Mass murders, such as Columbine or Newtown, gather headlines precisely because they are rare, but exhaustive coverage makes them seem frequent. There might also be a "copycat crime" pattern. Yet suppressing news to discourage copycats, like censoring Hollywood's vile habit of simulating mayhem, would violate the First Amendment.

Adam Lanza was grieved by his parents' divorce. A plurality of common criminals come from fatherless homes. The Columbine murderers were embittered by social failure engendered by cruel athletes — humiliation suffered by thousands of teenagers. We need ongoing dialogue on those issues, too, but not at the expense of fundamental rights.

Disarming the American public would violate the Second Amendment. It could not prevail nationally without abrogating the Fourth's requirement of probable cause for search and seizure, the Fifth's clause against taking of property, and Ninth and Tenth Amendment distinctions between federal powers and rights retained by states and individuals. Despite our grief and rage, we must refrain from tossing out half the Bill of Rights. Suspend rights today and suffer tyranny tomorrow. Many nations have done that, and found the road to liberty harder to navigate than the road to perdition.

Earlier, a murderer began a rampage in an Oregon shopping mall, and killed only two innocents before he was deterred by a legally armed private citizen. In a perfect world, no one would carry weapons or harbor malice. In the world we've got, dilemmas abound and solutions are provisional.